Many years ago one of my housemates took a canoe camping trip with friends over a holiday weekend down in West Virginia and his car was left at the launch site during the shuttle. A couple of days later I got a call from the police asking for him. When I explained that he was out of town, they asked if he owned a BMW sedan because they found one “damaged” that they thought was his. I asked if it was burgundy and the cop said “Ma’am, we can’t tell what color it was because somebody burned it.” They had to tow it and left a message tied to a tree nearby alerting him to call them. Imagine getting back to your car and finding that! That BMW was his baby and despite having relatively high miles it was immaculate.
He had quite a fight with his insurance company to get a higher compensation for the loss than they usually would for a 5 year old car with over 100K on it, but he succeeded by getting affidavits from the mechanics who had serviced it over the years and was able to get the same model, but a year younger and with 30K fewer miles on it as a full insured replacement.
A few months later a drunken local bragged about having “burned some yuppie’s car” in a bar in the area where the vandalism occurred. Just happened to be a deputy at an adjacent table familiar with the incident and the perpetrator was jailed and convicted (repeat arsonist.)